An overabundance of supply rarely does commercial real estate any favors – even when the rising stockpile anticipates a coming boom in demand. Assisted living Mesa and senior living Mesa care facilities are no exceptions, Bloomberg.com reports.
Senior housing developments have escalated considerably in the last two years in anticipation of a predicted doubling of demand over the next 35, but in the meantime, health-care real estate investment trusts (REITs) have brought up the rear of the property-trust market over the last 12 months. That follows last year’s all-time high performance. At this rate, the massive assisted living Mesa and senior living Mesa buildup could slash net operating income in senior housing down from this year’s 3.3 percent level to 1.8 percent by 2015 and 1.4 percent by 2016, Green Street Advisors Inc. recently predicted.
Over the past 12 months, the action taken in anticipation of aging baby boomers surging into assisted living Mesa and senior living Mesa facilities have driven the Bloomberg health-care REIT index down 18 percent. By comparison, the overall Bloomberg REIT index is down only 4.7 percent over the same period.
The logic behind the increase in community development for seniors isn’t entirely unsound: by 2050, the U.S. population of citizens 65 years and older is expected to reach 83.7 million, compared to the population of 43.1 million in 2012. There’s a lucrative demand for facilities with a broad mix of services, such as Chicago’s lakefront Hallmark high-rise community with both independent- and assisted-living lifestyles.
Meanwhile, health-care real estate executives will try to quell the panic. It’s just a matter of having the real estate available when the demand catches up. “Demand is inexorably increasing,” said Debra Cafaro, prominent health-care REIT Ventas’s chairman and chief executive officer. “From a long-term standpoint, it’s a great asset class because the demand is there.”
T. Andrew Smith, CEO of national senior living real estate developer Brookdale, added, “You have to go down and look at what’s happening in each local market. We just don’t see that much. It’s not to say that there is none, but we don’t see that much truly, directly, adversely new competition.”
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